Reactivating a JP FFXI account

[Russta]

I'm trying to bring my old character back to life but am having a little bother. I did some reading around and was astonished to see that Square quietly prohibited the use of any CC registered outside Japan. I'm okay with paying with Webmoney but this is where I hit a snag. When I try to change my payment to it, I get the following screen;

http://i46.tinypic.com/50il8p.jpg

The guide I'm following to do this states that it can take several attempts for POL to actually accept the change but it doesn't specify what it says when doing this and I can find no mention of a UCS-1014 error anywhere on the web. As it also states that there's a 1-3 day delay on being able to put in your Webmoney information to pay, I'm slightly confused as to what this screen is telling me. That it mentions content ID's is also puzzling.

When I realized that I wouldn't be able to pay with a CC, I deactivated the content ID's once again. I got an email to confirm this (also one for activating them). The thing is, trying to change the payment method seems to have automatically activated them again.

http://i45.tinypic.com/205ehvt.jpg

As far as I can tell, that's telling me my content ID's are active.

http://i50.tinypic.com/2jcsg9v.jpg

This screen, however, I believe is telling me that I have no content ID's active to deactivate.

I'm hoping that the first screen is informing of something along the lines of my content ID's being in transition. Given that this screen seems to be showing that my current payment method is still my old one has me worried though. Everyone knows what happens if Square try to take payment from a JP account with invalid CC details and it's not pleasant.

I never thought it'd be so hard trying to give my money to someone.

[Katlan]

hope you figure it out russta, niwaar was telling me about ur situation no more then 10 minutes ago lol

[Dmitry]

What happens if you have invalid billing info on a JP account? I'm curious

[Russta]

What happens if you have invalid billing info on a JP account? I'm curious

They send a bill to your Japanese address and the only way to get your account back is by taking it to some shop and paying it face-to-face. The majority of importers back then have a fictional address in their account.

[bungiefan]

It says you have no IDs to deactivate because you cannot deactivate them once you switch to WebMoney. They deactivate automatically when you stop putting WebMoney on the account and their prepaid time runs out. This payment method actually stops them from sending you a paper bill, it auto-deactivates your characters, and reactivates them when you put more WebMoney down for them. I currently have only 2 of my 3 characters active because I just stopped charging the third with WebMoney points. When I don't want to play for a month, I simply just don't add WebMoney that month. I've been able to return without trouble, and no paper bill attempted to be sent to me, causing my account to be locked. If it wasn't for the markup getting WebMoney from a place like SuTo Corp, we should all be using this method. It was cheaper for me to pay directly with my CC, or when I had someone in Japan to buy WebMoney cards for me without trying to make profit off of it. However, with the exchange rate making it cheaper to pay a JP monthly fee than an NA one for the first 5-6 years, I suppose I can handle it being the opposite for a bit.

I went through this in the past year myself because I also have a JP account from the first few months the game was running. It was about a day before I could actually add points to my account. The biggest trouble was in June or July when they changed how you have to remove points from your wallet on the WebMoney site to pay POL.

They send a bill to your Japanese address and the only way to get your account back is by taking it to some shop and paying it face-to-face. The majority of importers back then have a fictional address in their account.

Worse is you have only 30 days to pay that bill in cash or your account gets permanently banned. It's like doing a chargeback to an NA account. The bill has to be paid at a Japanese post office or convenience store, IIRC, and they only take cash. Japan doesn't allow you to pay off a debt on one card with another, so if your card declines for any reason, you get the paper bill in the main and your account suspended until you pay it. WebMoney changes this behaviour, since you pay ahaed 1-3 months at a time, and it just auto-deactivates your Content IDs that haven't been recharged.

If you followed the FFXIOnline.com guide to setting up an account for someone that couldn't read kanji, you had a fake name and address on your account (since you couldn't use Romaji for a non-JP name), and it's very hard to read that back to JP phone support (which stopped speaking English as soon as the NA PC release happened, and the NA service center can't give support on JP accounts and billing) when you don't fluently read Japanese and can't log into your account to read back the details now that FFXIOnline.com took down the guide in 2004 or so. You can't change the name on the account either, just the address, which is useless if you don't live in Japan or have a friend that you can use their address to receive the bill. You can however have a Security Token mailed to you in almost any country, except anywhere in South America. Even if you lived in Japan when you made your account and moved out of the country for various reasons (possibly military deployment or school moving you), SE has no method of changing the region on your account or allowing you to put a mailing address outside the region of your account on your account. 8 years is a long time to live in the same place for some people, I tend to move every 1-2 years. Hopefully they address this issue with FFXI, but so far it doesn't look like SquareEnix Accounts can have their region changed either, and address is still a problem if you live outside the region.

[Russta]

Yeah, that wasn't the PM button.

[Siya]

A bit of a necro bump but I'm getting ready to deactivate my FFXI account... however I don't want it to be lost forever. I imported FFXI way back in the day so my account is japanese. I wasn't sure if Russta was trying to revive his account with a new card or the same one he was using before... so my questions is.

If I deactivate my account will I be able to reactivate it with the same card I was using before? (not a japanese card)

Also as Russta stated I used a fictional address when I first signed up many years ago, will that have any effect on reactivating my account? Doubtful but meh I dunno